Monsieur X - The Incredible Story of the Most Audacious Gambler in History by Jamie Reid

$24.99 NZD

Category: True Stories

"A gripping page turner" Charlie Connelly, The New European *William Hill Sports Book of the Year award winning author* Monsieur X is a dazzling tale of glamour, riches, violence and ultimately tragedy. Patrice des Moutis was a handsome, charming and well-educated Frenchman with an aristocratic family, a respectable insurance business, and a warm welcome in the smartest Parisian salons. He was also a compulsive gambler and illegal bookie. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, Des Moutis made a daring attempt to beat the French state-run betting system. His success so alarmed the authorities that they repeatedly changed the rules of betting in an effort to stop him. And so a battle of wills began, all played out on the front pages of the daily newspapers as the general public willed Des Moutis on to ever greater triumphs. He remained one step ahead of the law until finally the government criminalised his activities, driving him into the arms of the underworld. Eventually the net began to close, high-profile characters found themselves the target of the state 's investigation, and people began turning up dead. ...Show more

Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner

$24.99 NZD

Category: True Stories

**International Bestseller** **The Times (UK) Memoir of the Year** **One of Newsweek's Most Anticipated Books of 2020** An extraordinary memoir of drama, tragedy, and royal secrets by Anne Glenconner--a close member of the royal circle and lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. As seen on Netflix's Th e Crown. Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact. A unique witness to landmark moments in royal history, Maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth's coronation, and a lady in waiting to Princess Margaret until her death in 2002, Anne's life has encompassed extraordinary drama and tragedy. In Lady in Waiting, she will share many intimate royal stories from her time as Princess Margaret's closest confidante as well as her own battle for survival: her broken-off first engagement on the basis of her "mad blood"; her 54-year marriage to the volatile, unfaithful Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, who left his fortune to a former servant; the death in adulthood of two of her sons; a third son she nursed back from a six-month coma following a horrific motorcycle accident. Through it all, Anne has carried on, traveling the world with the royal family, including visiting the White House, and developing the Caribbean island of Mustique as a safe harbor for the rich and famous-hosting Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Raquel Welch, and many other politicians, aristocrats, and celebrities. With unprecedented insight into the royal family, Lady in Waiting is a witty, candid, dramatic, at times heart-breaking personal story capturing life in a golden cage for a woman with no inheritance. ...Show more

No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani; Omid Tofighian (Translator)

$24.99 NZD

Category: True Stories

'Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.' Richard Flanagan Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the land of mountains... Since 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani has been held in the Manus Island off shore processing centre. People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests... This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through six years of incarceration and exile. Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains? ...Show more

Last Stop Auschwitz: My Story of Survival by Eddy de Wind

$24.00 NZD

$37.00 (35% off)

Category: True Stories

'We know that there is only one ending to this, only one liberation from this barbed wire hell- death.' Eddy de Wind In 1943 Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife Friedel, whom he had met and married at the Westerbork labour camp. At Auschwitz, they made it through the brutal selection process and were put to work in the medical barracks. In their new life, each day, each hour became a battle for survival. For de Wind, in his role as camp doctor, this meant negotiating the volatile guards. For Friedel, it meant avoiding Mengele's medical experiments and the threat of sexual assault. Despite all this, love prevailed. Passing notes through the wire, sometimes stealing a brief embrace, Friedel and Eddy clung to life. As the last Nazis fled at the end of the war, de Wind hid himself in an abandoned barracks and began to write with furious energy about his experiences at Auschwitz. The result is an extraordinary account of life as a prisoner, a near real-time record of the daily struggle, stress and horror, but also of the flickering moments of joy de Wind and Friedel found in each other. It reveals the best and the worst of humanity, a reminder of what we as humans were - and are - capable of. A harrowing and eloquent true story of suffering and survival, love and despair, it reminds us that there is hope, even in Hell. And it will linger with you long after the final page has been turned. ...Show more

Law's Strangest Cases - Extraordinary but True Tales from over Five Centuries of Legal History by Peter Seddon

$22.99 NZD

Category: True Stories

A rollicking collection of barely believable stories from five centuries of legal history - you'll be gripped by these tales of murder, intrigue, crime, punishment and the pursuit of justice. Meet the only dead parrot ever to give evidence in a court of law, the doctor with the worst bedside manner of a ll time, the murderess who collected money from her mummified victim for 21 years, and explore one of the most indigestible dilemmas - if you'd been shipwrecked 2,000 miles from home, would you have eaten Parker the cabin boy? The tales within these pages are bizarre, fascinating, hilarious and, most importantly, true. Revised, redesigned and updated for a new generation of legal eagles, this book is the perfect gift for lawyers, armchair detectives and true crime afficionados everywhere. ...Show more

An Unexplained Death - The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere by Mikita Brottman

$32.99 NZD

Category: True Stories

The unnerving true story of an unexplained death in Baltimore's historic Belvedere building.

200 Women by Ruth Hobday, Geoff Blackwell, Kieran Scott

$49.99 NZD

Category: True Stories

200 women from around the world, famous and unknown, answer the same five questions, such as “What really matters to you?” and “What would you change in the world if you could?” The answers are inspiring, moving, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, but always powerful. Interviewees include Graca Michel , widow of Nelson Mandela and an impressive political and social activist, author Margaret Atwood, Nobel laureate Jody Williams, US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and women from around the world making a difference. Each interview is accompanied by a photographic portrait, resulting in a volume that is compelling in word and image as it is global in its scope. New Zealand interviewees include, Jacinda Ardern, Louise Nicholas, Marilyn Waring, Damaris Coulter, Kimbra Johnson, Lydia Ko, Marama Fox, Eva McGauley and Karen Walker. ...Show more

No Wall Too High by Xu Hongci

$9.99 NZD

$40.00 (75% off)

Category: True Stories

It was one of the greatest prison breaks of all time, during one of the worst totalitarian tragedies of the 20th Century. Xu Hongci was an ordinary medical student when he was incarcerated under Mao's regime and forced to spend years of his youth in some of China's most brutal labour camps. Three times he tried to escape. And three times he failed. But, determined, he eventually broke free, travelling the length of China, across the Gobi desert, and into Mongolia. This is the extraordinary memoir of his unrelenting struggle to retain dignity, integrity and freedom; but also the untold story of what life was like for ordinary people trapped in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. ...Show more

Only Two for Everest: How a first ascent by Riddiford and Cotter shaped climbing history by Lyn McKinnon

$49.95 NZD

Category: True Stories | Reading Level: very good

The First New Zealand Himalayan Expedition, in 1951, was initiated by Earle Riddiford, who with Ed Cotter and Pasang Dawa Lama made the first ascent of Mukut Parbat, their target peak in the Garhwal Himalaya. Accompanying them on that expedition, though not to that summit, were two other New Zealand cli mbers, Edmund Hillary and George Lowe. In this enthralling narrative, journalist Lyn McKinnon tells the stories of Earle Riddiford and Ed Cotter, two extraordinary New Zealanders whose climbing achievements were forever eclipsed by the exploits of others. She draws on private papers as well as published work, and extensively interviews Cotter himself, and the families of both men, as well as many other contemporary climbers, to set the record straight. ...Show more